This invention relates generally to man-machine interaction and tactile communication. Particularly, this invention relates to the communication of precise and intelligible information or sensations utilizing a device placed around the neck of a person and using tactile actuators to stimulate the neck skin from various angles or peripheral locations.
The five senses of a human provide an individual with cues about location, distance, velocity, acceleration and other properties of surrounding items. In simulated or virtual worlds such as electronic video games, the senses are restricted by the limited size of the video screen, low sound quality and the limited tactile sensations provided by the vibration of a hand-held controller, for example.
Vibrating game controllers are known and have been devised (Nishiumi, Koshima and Ohta, 2006) and used to create, in the player, a sense of interaction with the physical world. For instance, in a car racing game, as the vehicle leaves the pavement, the hand-held game controller vibrates. In first person shooter games, the subject may be informed of having been hit by a projectile through the vibration of the game controller, for example. With the advent of controller-less game systems, the prior art means by which tactile information was provided to the subject has been further limited because these new systems no longer enable user interaction using hand-held controllers (pad, joystick, etc.). The KINECT gaming system developed by the Microsoft Corporation is an example of a controller-less game system. Thus, a need exists in the art to provide detailed tactile information to a video game player, for example.
Tactile Communication
Tactile communication methods, systems and devices have been devised to provide an individual with the ability to understand text and commands, or to augment situational awareness. These inventions primarily relate to artificial vision for the blind (MIT Touchlab, 2005) and to remote communication with individuals (Gilson & Christopher (2007), Rupert & Kolev (2008) and Zelek & Holbein (2008)).
Tactile displays, as the visual-to-tactile information translation is often called, have been extensively investigated by research organizations such as the MIT Touch Lab (MIT Touchlab, 2005).
Research and prior art in the area of tactile displays has generally been concentrated around passing tactile information to the skin, and the mechanical and physiological parameters that limit the complexity and bandwidth, (amount of information per unit time) that can be transmitted with no particular interest in the neck skin as a high-resolution sensory organ.
The Tactile Situation Awareness System (TSAS) is a wearable tactile display intended to provide spatial orientation cues (Zelek & Holbein, 2008; Rupert & Kolev, 2008). A belt equipped with transducers and worn around the waist (Gilson & Christopher, 2007) was devised to provide orientation cues to soldiers. This prior art uses tactile stimulus at various positions around the torso and the belt area to pass on information on the location of an incoming threat to the subject. However, the neck skin as a high-resolution sensory organ was not considered or suggested.
The Neck Skin as a High-Resolution Sensory Organ
One measure of the effectiveness of a form of communication is how fast complex information can be communicated to an individual through a specified form of communication. In information theory, this is typically measured by how many characters can be communicated to an individual, and at what rate these characters can be comprehended by the individual.
The skin of an untrained individual is an imprecise sensory organ. While a person can discriminate between tactile stimuli applied to individual fingers, toes, other body parts or far-apart skin locations, the ability to discriminate between neighboring skin locations is greatly limited. However, tactile stimulus applied at various angles or peripheral locations around the neck can be discerned despite the closeness of the application points. An untrained individual is often capable of discriminating as many as 8 to 12 different angular or peripheral locations around his or her neck (FIG. 2). A simple test shows that an individual may be trained to distinguish the location of tactile stimuli applied to many more angular or peripheral locations around the neck.
Consider a horizontal clock face 28 facing up and centered on the subject's neck (FIG. 2). If the clock is oriented in such a way that 12 o'clock points towards the front of the subject, one can devise an experiment where the neck of the subject is touched at various angular or peripheral locations around the neck and the subject names the hour mark corresponding to the point of contact. For instance, when the subject is touched straight behind the neck, he or she will say: “6 o'clock”. An untrained subject can, in general, “tell apart” or distinguish each of the 12 hour marks. This ability to distinguish the 12 different angular or peripheral locations corresponds to a resolution of 12 or, in digital terms, between 8 (=23, or 3-bit resolution) and 16 (=24, or 4-bit resolution).
With such a resolution, an individual is not only able to tell directions but can also distinguish between combinations of stimulation points. By simultaneously stimulating several locations around the neck, with some training, it is then possible to communicate complex information to an individual simply through tactile communication (see Table 1, Table 2, Table 3, and Table 4 shown and discussed below).
The neck skin has a unique property that enables a person to accurately discriminate tactile stimuli applied from various directions onto its surface. The present invention exploits this discriminatory stimuli property to convey information and sensations to a subject immersed in a simulated or virtual world such as an electronic video game. Embodiments of the invention utilizing this methodology of tactile stimuli may also be used, for example, to communicate with pilots, the blind, the autistic, musicians and those unable to communicate verbally or visually.